Silas House is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the novels Clay’s Quilt, 2001; A Parchment of Leaves, 2003; The Coal Tattoo, 2005; Eli the Good, 2009; Same Sun Here (co-authored with Neela Vaswani) 2012, Southernmost, 2018, and Lark Ascending, 2022, as well as a book of creative nonfiction Something’s Rising, co-authored with Jason Howard, 2009; and four plays. 2025 sees the publication of his first book of poetry, All These Ghosts, and his first murder-mystery (under the pseudonym S.D. House), Dead Man Blues.
House is known as one of the most visible LGBTQ people in the South, and as one of the major voices of Southern Literature and Appalachian Literature. From 2023 to 2025 he served as the first openly gay poet laureate of Kentucky.
In 2024 House became a Grammy finalist for writing, producing and serving as the Creative Director of the Tyler Childers video “In Your Love”, the first country music video in history to feature a gay love story. The video was #1 on Apple and YouTube and was also nominated for an MTV Video Award as well as honors from the Academy of Country Music, CMT, and the Country Music Academy.
House is a former commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” House’s fiction and poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and his essays and journalism have appeared recently in Time, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Advocate, Garden and Gun, and The Bitter Southerner.
In 2022 House was chosen for the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBT writer in the nation, and in 2020 he was chosen as the Appalachian of the Year in a nationwide poll. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the recipient of four honorary doctorates, and is the winner of the Southern Book of the Year (2023), the Booklist Editors’ Choice Award (2023), two Nautilus Award, an EB White Awards, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Lee Smith Award, and many other honors, including an invitation to read at the Library of Congress and being long-listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
House was an executive producer and one of the subjects of the documentary Hillbilly, which ran for five years on Hulu. The film won the Audience Award from the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Media Award from the Foreign Press Association. As a music journalist House has worked with artists such as Kacey Musgraves, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams, Jason Isbell, Leann Womack, Charley Crockett, Tyler Childers, S.G. Goodman, and many others. House is also host of the popular podcast “Writing Lessons”.
House serves as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair at Berea College, on the fiction faculty at the Naslund-Mann School of Creative Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, and as a series editor for the University Press of Kentucky. A native of Southeastern Kentucky, he now lives in Lexington.